Recorder of a nation's soul

January 18 2003

Name Rex Dupain
Age 48
Occupation Photographer
Outlook "Sometimes you meet people, they may have very little, but there's this spirituality that radiates from them."

It was, yet again, another blistering hot day in Cunnamulla, a flyblown, one-cab town in Queensland's remote Paroo district. Rex Dupain cruised down the main street on his hired bicycle, seeing no one, hearing nothing - at night, the town, subject of the controversial recent documentary by Dennis O'Rourke, was present only in the hum of radios in houses, the screech of a car.

That afternoon, as he rode through the deserted streets, there it was, the "decisive moment" so beloved of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Two young Aboriginal lads leaned against a wall, staring into space. He approached them warily - here he was, a white man, an outsider - and made the shot. Then, as if on cue, 15 bikies suddenly roared into town on their Harley-Davidsons.

It was a moment straight out of Max Max, he recalls: here was life proving that truth was almost always stranger than fiction. "A huge, leather-clad gorilla got off his bike and asked the kids what was the best thing in Cunnamulla. One grunted, 'nothing'. It was a surreal moment. I thought I was going to get my head ripped off."

Stories like these flow out of Dupain, son of Max Dupain, as do photographs that form their visual equivalent. The tale above springs from an epic four-year journey recently completed, subject of his new book, Australian Images.

There are many others. His experience as the lone white spectator in a 400-strong crowd at an outback football match in Darwin - "I didn't dare take out");document.write("

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my camera". His almost transcendental meeting with the subject of one image, Smiling Madonna in Arnhem Land. Stumbling across a surreal tableaux in remote Queensland - a bathtub and a Hills hoist. Snapping a pair of sunbathers lying on pallets in the lunar landscape of Coober Pedy.

The catalyst for the trip came in 1998 when Dupain decided to set out to photograph a country in a state of flux, moving from one incarnation to another. There was a sense of time running out, he recalls, when he loaded the tools of his trade into his car and finally set off to map the land. "I just had this national thing hovering in my head."

As he writes in the book's introduction, he also wanted to find fresh ways of seeing the country. "No gaudy picture postcards of the nation ... I [wanted] to filter my vision of the country's soul through a net of intrigues which [were] less obvious and hopefully more meaningful."

The results are breathtaking - sad, moral, political, joyful. In Sydney, his hometown, the beaches and city drew his eye: the harbour captured in tonal layers, shrouded in mist; the city's architecture presented as a Blade Runner-style snarl of iron.

In Melbourne, he found "beautiful rain" - the city has the most attractive precipitation, he thinks. In Adelaide, it was the sense of a lost, dreaming city sandwiched between sea and the nothingness of desert; in the outback and the north, it was the post-apocalyptic terrain itself, endlessly compelling to, as he puts it wryly, "a white guy with a camera".

Dupain did up to five trips a year over this period to harvest images for his book. Still, as he says, geographic distance, the sense of the exotic, did not govern where he went or what he photographed. Instinct was a key factor - " you let the photographic dog take you for a walk". Ultimately, it's not the place itself, he says. "You don't have to travel to the ends of the earth to find a great picture. It's about the light, the content - a shot has to have something special, you need to reinvent things."

In Dupain's own backyard were scenes that demanded capturing. The beach compels him, as it did for his father, but there are interesting differences. Dupain snr's beach was a white one, dominated by bronzed lifesavers and Aryan beach girls. Dupain jnr approaches it as a barometer of change - his beach is multicultural and diverse as well as sensual. One shot, Bondi Boys, is a striking example. Three young men - Lebanese, possibly - sit facing the ocean, checking the talent. In another, 'I'd Go That', young multicultural Australia is captured in a quick click of the camera.

Dupain is loath to name a favourite image, but concedes that one, Smiling Madonna, featuring a luminous young Aboriginal girl, remains resonant. "She was a joy to photograph. Sometimes you meet people, they may have very little, but there's this spirituality that radiates from them. She was like that."

He avoids taking a moral or political slant to his work, but sometimes feelings and personal responses seep into the images. "You should never mix politics and art, but you can't help feeling compassion. When I shoot a camera, I'm taking pictures of myself."

The question of legacies - of fathers and sons competing - hovers. Is being the son of Max Dupain a curse or a blessing? Dupain jnr, who is gearing up for a major exhibition, Bathers, at the Rex Irwin Gallery next month, is quick to dismiss public expectations, the burden of birthright. "I don't really care. This is what I do. If people want to read things into it, that's their business."